


born into a legacy of survivors

by aletterinthenameofsanity



Series: the odds were never in our favor [14]
Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Gen, Introspection, POV Claire, Post-Canon, a glimpse into the future of Panem post-Rebellion, after end of "show me where my armor ends", also into Claire's life with such a messed up family, discussion of the Hunger Games, how monsters become legends become stories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-05-16 08:35:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19314520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aletterinthenameofsanity/pseuds/aletterinthenameofsanity
Summary: For the most part, it is so easy to forget, on a regular basis, what everyone in her family was before District Twelve. Claire can often go days at a time without remembering what her mother, Uncles, and Aunts did to survive. She can spend days without thinking of the past, instead only thinking of the present world she lives in and all the ways that her family are thriving.Claire loves her family to no end. Her mother and her drive to make the world better, her Uncle Five’s cunning and loyalty, her Uncle Klaus' kindness and selflessness, her Aunt Vanya's musical skills and her strength in recovery, her Aunt Katniss' bravery and intelligence, her Uncle Luther and her Uncle Diego's desire to honor the dead and their work ethic- there are so many positive sides to her Victor family members.But sometimes, it's hard to forget. On the bad days, when her mother's hands shake and Uncle Five’s gaze goes sharp and Uncle Diego can't stop staring at the tally marks on his skin and Aunt Vanya forgets to blink as frequently as a normal person and Uncle Luther brings his cat over and Aunt Katniss brings in a deer for dinner and Uncle Klaus reverts to just speaking with his hands, Claire knows what her family is.





	born into a legacy of survivors

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Silvershadowe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silvershadowe/gifts).



> Title is from Ashe Vernon.
> 
> So, uh, I had some semblance of this idea for awhile, but all the comments by a bunch of you lovely people on my "A Question For My Subscribers" post really inspired me to put fingers to the keyboard and write the rest of this. Hope you all like it, and that it makes sense/means something to you all!

_When a monster stopped behaving like a monster, did it stop being a monster?_

_Did it become something else?_

― **Kristin Cashore**

 

Claire is the only one of her cousins who remembers a time before living in District Twelve, who remembers life in District Thirteen, and even before that in District One. She has memories of men in white armor, of television screens with her Mommy and Uncle Luther's faces on them, of what the Games did in real time.

She remembers living in District Thirteen without her Mommy or Uncle Luther or Aunt Vanya. She remembers a time when it was just her living in that children's room, sometimes having dinner with Uncle Klaus or Uncle Diego or Uncle Five.

She remembers the times, if only distantly, when Uncle Klaus and Uncle Diego and Uncle Five would bite their words at dinner, would have dark looks in their eyes when she asked them about her Mommy. She remembers the way that Uncle Five’s shoulders used to hunch, the way that Uncle Klaus’s hands would shake and he would press his fingernails into his palms to stop the trembling, the way that Uncle Diego would stare sometimes, gaze unswerving in an almost unsettling way. She remembers the whispered conversations, the ways they would flinch when she asked them about life before District Thirteen, about what was going on in District One.

And some of this continues to this day.

Her mom sometimes has that dark look in her eyes. Sometimes she’ll be eating and suddenly clench her fingers around her silverware as something from the world before District Twelve was mentioned. There are some days when her mom will return from the new Capitol, a weight on her shoulders that cannot be relieved by anything. There will be some days when her mom looks at Claire not with utter love and devotion in her eyes, but rather a sense of terror, like she used to when she would just visit District One to see Claire on the weekends.

There are some days when she'll be at Uncle Klaus and Uncle Dave's house and Uncle Klaus will go as silent as Uncle Dave. He'll be unable to speak outside of sign language for hours at a time, unable to leave the house to go to the Mayor's office. He gets stuck in his own head and his own living room, staying wrapped up in a blanket with Uncle Dave unable to do anything but hold him and help him through the Bad Days until the whole thing is over.

There are some days when she'll be with Uncle Five and his hand will go to his ribs unconsciously as he’s speaking, as if to hold a phantom pain. There will be days where his words go sharp when he's talking about things, and she can see that killer instinct that all of her family has, save her cousins, Uncle Peeta, Aunt Eudora, Aunt Alyssa, and Uncle Dave. 

There are some days when she’ll be with Aunt Vanya and Aunt Vanya's silver eyes won't seem as normal as they always are- they'll be reminders of what happened because of the Capitol. One day, when she’s at Aunt Vanya’s, and Aunt Vanya’s grip tightens too tightly around a glass and it shatters in her hand. She stares at it, at the blood welling up against her too-pale, bleached-white skin, and Claire will be reminded of what the Capitol's surgeons did to her, the propaganda that they turned her into.

There are some days when she'll be with Uncle Luther and she'll go to pet one of his cats- named Finnick and Crest- and her hand will pause in the cat's fur as she remembers why they are named what they are. She will remember the TV reruns of information regarding various games, recognize Crest Trevon's raven hair in the cat's dark fur, recognize Finnick Odair's golden hair in a cat's yellow fur, and she will know why her Uncle named these cats what he did, the tribute he was making out of them.

There are some days when she'll be with Uncle Diego and Aunt Eudora and Uncle Diego's shirt will move, exposing a glimpse of the tattooed tally marks lining his lower torso, the number matching the exact number of tributes that died in the Games after his Victory. Uncle Diego will follow Claire's gaze and swallow deeply before forcing a false smile to his lips as he turns back to his wife to talk about something.

There will be some days when she'll be at Aunt Katniss' house and Uncle Peeta will set a flame to the oven and Aunt Katniss will flinch back from the oven and towards Rue and Claire as if to protect them. She'll turn her deaf ear towards them while flinging out an arm, and it takes Uncle Peeta's reassuring words to calm her down.

But for the most part, it is so easy to forget, on a regular basis, what everyone in her family was before District Twelve. Claire can often go days at a time without remembering what her mother, Uncles, and Aunts did to survive. She can spend days without thinking of the past, instead only thinking of the present world she lives in and all the ways that her family are thriving.

Claire loves her family to no end. Her mother and her drive to make the world better, her Uncle Five’s cunning and loyalty, her Uncle Klaus' kindness and selflessness, her Aunt Vanya's musical skills and her strength in recovery, her Aunt Katniss' bravery and intelligence, her Uncle Luther and her Uncle Diego's desire to honor the dead and their work ethic- there are so many positive sides to her Victor family members.

But sometimes, it's hard to forget. On the bad days, when her mother's hands shake and Uncle Five’s gaze goes sharp and Uncle Diego can't stop staring at the tally marks on his skin and Aunt Vanya forgets to blink as frequently as a normal person and Uncle Luther brings his cat over and Aunt Katniss brings in a deer for dinner and Uncle Klaus reverts to just speaking with his hands, Claire knows what her family is. She knows just the kind of things that they did in order to make it to their current, healthy and happy lives.

-

Claire's mom loves to wear tank tops. The number of the other victors. Clare has never really figured out why this particular fashion choices the only one shared amongst most of her adult family members, but it has led to some interesting discoveries.

Such as the fact that though the Capitol carved away most scars incurred during the games, the rarely touched the ones that the victors incurred after the games. The tattoos, such as those that Uncle Diego and Uncle Klaus got themselves, the dyed hair, the wounds from small mishaps in kitchens and on training grounds. It is clear to see the scars that her family incurred not only during the Rebellion, but in the time beforehand, the time when they were celebrated by the Capitol and what should have been a peaceful time in their lives.

But God, Claire knows better than nearly anyone that that time wasn't peaceful and that it almost destroyed each of her adult family members, though in different ways. She knows it from their own stories.

Her Uncle Klaus and Aunt Vanya don’t talk about the world that used to be. They prefer the here and now, where they're not under the thumb of the Capitol and instead living good lives, with Uncle Klaus as Mayor, with a loving husband and son, and Aunt Vanya helping run the bakery, with the support of her wife Alyssa. They're both happy nowadays, and they don't really like to discuss the pasts that gave them those scars.

Beyond their time in the Arena- which is public knowledge- Claire doesn’t know about how they lived the years in between his win and the Rebellion. Uncle Klaus doesn’t talk about it, and Uncle Dave and Aunt Alyssa refuse to tell anything that their spouses don't discuss themselves.

Uncle Luther and Uncle Diego will talk a little about what happened, when they’re talking about the memorial they led the building of. Uncle Luther will tell small stories about the tributes that he’d met personally, and Uncle Diego will describe the small memories at the ruins of Arenas across the country. 

Uncle Five is blunt about everything that happened, whenever she's brave enough to ask him. He tells her about the Arena, about being uncertain of living or dying, about going behind the Capitol's back in order to work with the rebellion to overthrow the Capitol.

In between teaching her how to use computers and how to code electronics, he teaches her how to rewire a bomb- not that he plans her to ever have to actually use it, but just in case. Just in case.

Paranoia is something Claire recognizes in all of those that were once Victors, the flashes in their eyes that spell out the suspicion that they're still in some kind of Arena, that they still haven't escaped the Capitol's hold.

(There's a reason why Claire doesn't like to ask Uncle Five about what happened, because she knows that he'll tell her without censor or barrier the sheer depravity of things that they all did to survive. And she doesn't think that she wants to know the specifics. Some things should definitely stay in the past. Some kind of monsters shouldn't be unleashed.)

And Claire's mother- well, she tells Claire stories. Stories that, though they skirt the more explicit details of the Capitol, talk about what happened. How her mother survived the Capitol, how (she never says, but Claire _knows_ ) Uncle Klaus survived. How Uncle Five was the one who got them all involved with the Rebellion. How Uncle Ben died- one of the major reasons that Uncle Klaus never talks about the past.

Through these stories and her own memories, Claire knows, better than maybe any other kid in their small (but ever-growing) District, what it means to live in the world they do. She has memories of the past as well as stories by the ones who created the world they all live in.

The world that her family fought to build for kids like her is a far kinder one than the one they left behind, but it is still an extension of the same world. It is still a product of the world that gave them those scars, the world that turned them into broken things.

So Claire is cautious as she grows up. Cautious to idealize and cautious to villanize, always taking a second glance at any impression or thought she has. She doesn't want to make the mistake of casting anyone as villain or hero, as saint or monster.

-

Remembering only gets worse on the annual Day of Remembrance, when the whole class goes to Uncle Luther’s memorial, and all of the stories of the Hunger Games are brought to the forefront of everyone's life.

And of course Peter Davison (the boy with the prettiest singing voice in classs, the boy who is the son of a farmer, the boy who’s really good at math- probably the best in the class- but absolute shit at history) has to say the stupidest fucking thing at lunch that day.

“They’re monsters,” Peter Davison says at lunch at the memorial. “They’re not heroes. They _killed_ kids.”

And god, does Claire know what her family did. She knows, though she tries not to ever think about it. She knows that Uncle Klaus and Aunt Vanya hate talking about it, but that it _did_ happen. She knows about the children they killed in order to to survive, the monstrous things they did to make it out of the Arena and the Capitol.

“They gave us a better world,” Ben says, sitting down at their lunch table, “By what they did. What they stood for.”

But Ben’s right, even if he’s putting it in far more idealistic terms than Claire would.

Not everything can be made anew. Not everything can be fixed. There will always be cracks and scars and broken things. Claire knows this. She's a logical person. She's not going to delude herself into false assumptions about happy endings.

But she also knows that things can be mended, if only a little, if one cares enough, and that is always better than the alternative. People can put effort into things, put their lives into things, and can attempt to make things better. And they will always know that they cannot make things Good, but they can help things improve.

This is what Clare family has done, broken and bitter and beautiful as they are. They have tried their best to make the world better for everyone will come after them, and they will never be whole, but they have made something for themselves that the Capital can never take away. They have made a world that might not be new, might not be good, but is newer, is better.

And that’s enough.

"Our family may have done things," Claire says, "And they weren't good things, but they did them to survive. And they made things better afterward. They played an integral role in making this world better, in overthrowing the Capitol."

(Yeah, it pays to have two politicians and multiple propagandists in the family. Claire knows exactly what to say to flatter people's images most, to tell the story best.)

"They just got cast in that role because they were so prominent," Peter says, "Because we needed heroes and they were there."

Now, however, that's where he's crossed the line. Claire's family may have done monstrous things, but they have also done heroic things. (Sometimes stupidly heroic, but definitely heroic.) They have done everything they can to help build a better world, and they haven't always succeeded, but they have damn well tried. They've more than earned the accolades and legends to their names.

"I'm not sure if you're aware," Claire says, "But my Uncle Klaus- the Mayor- killed President Hargreeves. He's the one who ended the Rebellion. So he very much played an important role in saving us. So did my Uncle Five, who planned raids. So did my mom, Uncle Diego, Aunt Vanya, Uncle Luther, and Uncle Peeta, and Aunt Katniss, who were instrumental in infiltrating the Capitol itself at the end of the Rebellion. My Uncle Ben  _died_ in the Games in an effort to distract from the Rebellion's plans. So they have most  _definitely_ earned their titles."

Peter looks like he's about to speak again, but he's interrupted before he can.

"Everything alright over here?" Uncle Diego asks, heading over to the lunch table, and Claire is so happy to see her Uncle.

She knows the best and the worst about Uncle Diego, has seen the footage of his Games. She knows the kids he killed when he was just a kid, knows the full extent of what the Capitol forced him to do. She knows, also, about his guilt, about everything he's done to atone for what he did to survive. She knows about his tally mark tattoos and the memorial and the fact that he and Aunt Eudora have done everything possible to raise their children in a world without violence or coercion.

Her family used to be monsters, yes, and they are legends and heroes to the rest of the world, but she knows them like no one else does. She knows their flaws and their strengths, every part of them that they don't share with the rest of the world. 

And she knows them to be good people trying their best, trying not to fail a world that has done nothing but fail them.

"Everything's doing just good," Claire says with a smile, and she means it. She really does.

 

_God did not make us perfect._

_But he gave us this morgue key, these surgical staples, and the will to improve._

_(Live and be happy, and make others so.)_

**-Emily Horne and Joey Comeau**

**Author's Note:**

> I know you all are probably long-done with this series by now, but I hope you enjoyed it!


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